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UMS'nJIP


a
re a Swiss contemporary music duo based in Münster (Valais/Switzerland) at the foot of the Finsteraarhorn and the Rhone Glacier, consisting of Ulrike Mayer-Spohn (UMS) on recorders & electronics and Javier Hagen (JIP), voice & electronics.


One of the most experienced and distinguished contemporary music laboratories of our times, they work as composers, performers and organizers within a global network of composers, visual artists, stage directors, researchers, universities and festivals. Their special interest in long term collaboration, with its exchange of knowledge and awareness, brings context to new creations and results in an outstanding increase of artistic content. In this manner, UMS'nJIP explore new settings for voice, recorders and electronics, ranging from live to digital performance in concert, scenic or installative formats and often integrate European as well as non-European music.


UMS'nJIP have been invited to perform at prestigious contemporary music festivals around the world including Zürich, Lucerne, Donaueschingen, Stuttgart, Berlin, Paris, Venice, Barcelona, Athens, Istanbul, Cairo, Moscow, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tongyeong, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and New York. They have premiered hundreds of works, collaborating with both world famous and aspiring young composers such as Heiner Goebbels, Wolfgang Rihm, Mauricio Kagel, Jennifer Walshe, Wolfgang Mitterer, Erik Oña, Luis Codera Puzo, Chikashi Miyama, Du Yun, Huang Ruo and Guo Wenjing. They can look back on more than 1300 concerts since their debut in 2007 and are one of the most active contemporary music ensembles worldwide, bringing both young and established works not only to famous venues but also to audiences who do not have easy access to live performances of top quality contemporary music.


Both individually and as a duo UMS and JIP have received numerous commissions and awards and have been invited to share their knowledge in renowned universities in Europe, America and Asia. JIP is also the director of the Swiss Contemporary Music Festival Forum Wallis and the current president of ISCM Switzerland, he serves as well the boards of the European Conference of Promoters of New Music ECPNM (2014-8), the Swiss Music Edition, and of the UNESCO Commission for the Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Canton of Valais (2009-18). Since 2013 UMS has been pioneering two research projects: Recorder Map and Recorderology, and the duo has been invited to act as experts in the European Union's FP7 i-Treasures project.





A high performance
small scale contemporary music laboratory and global network


Although UMS’nJIP do handle an impressive workload, their aim is not to premiere as much as possible but to perform new works as often as possible – since works basically grow by being performed.


At a time in which it is increasingly difficult to defend reflective, not primarily commercially-oriented music, UMS’nJIP maximize artistic adventurousness by reducing economic risk to a minimum: Strict adherence to a small cast, supported by exceptional and internationally recognized experience, expertise, versatility, agility and unique ness means that UMS’nJIP can call themselves one of the most active contemporary music ensembles worldwide, alongside Ensemble Modern, Intercontemporain and Kronos Quartet. The large number of performances implies a remarkably high performance rate of new works (up to 100 performances per work, well above the global average for classical contemporary music < 5), and, more important, this deeply benefits the performance quality and emotional impact of the performed works.


Thanks to the consistently small scale of their projects, UMS’nJIP can achieve their projects with both great flexibility and irregular financing, especially in countries where new music is in a politically and financially difficult position and the featuring of high quality new music is particularly important in concerts and teaching. Fully aware that creativity cannot only be brought to society by performances but also by active participation in cultural politics, UMS’nJIP are also involved in different local, national and international structures. Within these structures, they have initiated more than 500 further projects and commissions since 2006.







UMS


Extraordinary diversity describes the composer and multi-instrumentalist Ulrike Mayer-Spohn who plays the recorder (with a focus on contemporary music), as well as historical string instruments (fiddle and baroque violin). She studied composition and audio design with Erik Oña at the Studio of Electronic Music, Academy of Music, Basel, beginning to compose in 2007, and receiving commissions from the festival Forum Valais and the international New Music Days, Shanghai. Her work has been performed by the Stuttgart Vocal soloists, Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Vertigo, DissonArt, L'Arsenale, cool a cappella (1st Prize world choir games 2008) and her own ensemble Ums' n Jip in Switzerland, France, Greece, Italy, Russia, Australia, the USA and China, premiered under the baton of Beat Furrer, Mark Foster, Tsung Yeh, Jürg Henneberger and Filippo Perocco and broadcast by the Swiss radio. She was awarded the 1st Prize in the Walter Ferrato composition contest in Savona 2017, the 1st Prize in the Weimarer Frühjahrstage für Zeitgenössische Musik composition contest 2017, the 1st Prize in the London Ear Festival composition contest 2016, the 2nd Prize in the composition competition Culturescapes 2010, 2nd Prize in the composition competition at the Bern music festival 2011, the Scholarship Award for 2011 at the Music Village Mount Pelion in Greece and the Call for Scores Award L'Arsenale Treviso, Italy 2011. In the ensemble Ums' n Jip she has undertaken research in the field of musical theater (chamber operas One, Two, Three, Four, Five), live electronic music and sound spacialization. She studied recorder with Ulrike Mauerhofer at the Musikhochschule Karlsruhe, with Conrad Steinmann and Corina Marti at the Schola Cantorum Basel before specializing in contemporary music and studying with Dorothea Winter at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. From 2009-11 she studied for a specialized master's degree in contemporary performance at the HSM in Basel supervised by Jürg Henneberger, Marcus Weiss and Mike Svoboda and has taken masterclasses with Marion Verbruggen, Peter van Heyghen, Sebastien Marq and Gerd Lünenbürger. She studied baroque violin and viola with Martina Graulich and David Plantier and fiddle with Randal Cook in Basel. Ulrike Mayer-Spohn works with internationally leading composers and annually plays more than 20 world premieres dedicated to her, which she has recorded for the radio as well as VDE Gallo and col legno on CD. Together with the Swiss composer and singer Javier Hagen, she established the experimental new music duo Ums `N Jip for voice, recorder and electronics, which, alongside the Ensemble Modern, Intercontemporain and Kronos is one of the most active ensembles worldwide and in 2011 won the prestigious MusiquePro scholarship. Since 1999, Ulrike Mayer-Spohn has also performed as a recorder player, violinist, violist and fiddle player in specialized early music ensembles such as the Amsterdam Barok Compagnie, Freitagsakademie, Collegium Musicum Stuttgart, La Chapelle Ancienne, Musica Poetica, Muscadin and La Morra and has performed in Germany, China, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy and Switzerland. ulrikems.info



JIP

Javier Hagen is one of the most astonishing classical singers of his generation: new music, performance art and Swiss folk music rank equally in his repertoire alongside opera and early music. Hagen was born as Javier-Ignacio Palau-Ribes (JIP) in 1971 in Barcelona and raised between 6 languages on the Mediterranean and in the Valais Alps. He studied classical singing (both tenor and countertenor) in Germany, Italy and Switzerland with Roland Hermann, Alain Billard and Nicolai Gedda, and composition with Heiner Goebbels and Wolfgang Rihm. He studied Lied with Irwin Gage, Hartmut Höll and Ernst Haefliger and early music with Karel van Steenhoven and Kees Boeke. He has a four-octave vocal range. Hagen has worked with world-class composers such as Reimann, Kagel, Rosenmann and Eötvös and leading artists from the worlds of concrete poetry and constructive art such as Eugen Gomringer, Uecker and Rolf Schroeter. Guest appearances have taken him to the modern music festivals in Donaueschingen, Zurich, Geneva, Lucerne, Karlsruhe, Amsterdam, Strasbourg, Bologna, Milan, Prague, New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Adelaide, Riga, Avignon and Berlin. Alongside operatic roles such as Handel's Giulio Cesare, Zsupan (Kalman), Dardanus (Rameau), Stanislaus (Zeller), Bruno (Roesler), Toni (Kalman) and Pappacoda (Strauss), Javier Hagen has premiered more than 300 works, including operas 'à l'air en verre' by Daniel Mouthon 'eismeer' by Christoph Schiller, 'poem ohne held' by Regina Irman, 'esther de racine' by Boris Yoffe, 'The Madman's Diary' by Guo Wenjing, 'Marienglas' by Beat Gysin, 'Les Musiciens de Brème' by Wen Deqing, 'Keyner nit' by Mathias Steinauer, 'Ushba et Tetnuld' by Nicolas Vérin and almost all vocal works by Maria Porten. He has made more than 50 recordings and broadcasts for Swiss, German, French, Czech, Chinese, Russian, Mongolian, Spanish, Egyptian, Italian and Latvian radio and television. He won prizes at international contemporary music and composition competitions in 2001, 2004 and 2008 in Basel, Lausanne and Dusseldorf. In 2003, his distorted folk song arrangements "s´sch mr alles 1 Ding" were released on CD on the Swiss label "musiques suisses". His compositions, in particular the vocal works, are performed throughout Europe, Israel, China, Korea, Russia, Australia, North and Central America, by ensembles and conductors including Titus Engel, Ensemble Phoenix, Basler Madrigalisten, Schweizer Jugendchor, Männerstimmen Basel, Philip Bride, Eliana Burki, Amar Quartet. In 2012, a selection of his graphic scores was shown at the prestigious Museum of Modern Art ‘haus konstruktiv’ in Zurich. At the European Youth Choir Festival 2012, Javier Hagen represented German-speaking Switzerland in the context of 'Swiss Composers meet Europe'. With Ulrike Mayer-Spohn, Hagen formed the experimental new music duo UMS 'n JIP, which, with over 100 concerts annually is one of the most active and prolific contemporary music ensembles around the world and winner of the prestigious scholarship MusiquePro. Javier Hagen also directs the international contemporary music festival Forum Wallis, hosting Stockhausen's Helicopter String Quartet with André Richard and the Arditti String Quartet in 2015. He is called as an expert on experimental music theater for the University of Arts in Bern, he is the President of the Swiss Section of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM Switzerland), of IGNM-VS and serves the boards of the European Conference of Promoters of New Music ECPNM (2015-2018), of the Swiss Music Edition (2016-), Score Follower (2020-) and Swissfestivals (2013-2019). He presents guest lectures at universities in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo, Moscow, Istanbul, Cairo, Buenos Aires, Adelaide, New York, Thessaloniki, Barcelona, Riga and is member of the academic board of the Contemporary Opera Academy at the Festival de Nueva Opera de Buenos Aires (FNOBA) related to the Teatro Colon. He is a jury member at national and international composition and new music competitions (a.o. ISCM World Music Days Young Composers Award, Bohol Philippines Int. Choir Competition) and a member of various committees on behalf of the canton of Valais as well as for the inventory of the cultural heritage on behalf of UNESCO (2009-2018). In 2007 he was nominated for "Walliser of the Year." In 2013 he was awarded the Prix Culturel de l'Etat du Valais. In 2021 he was appointed by the Inamori Foundation to nominate candidates for the renowned Kyoto Music Prize. javierhagen.ch